"Just remember us as crushing" - Exodus drummer Tom Hunting reflects on over four decades of metal mayhem

by Scott Roos

photos by Scott Roos (Scotty the Rooster Photography)

Forty years is a long time to be doing anything. Forty years of thrash metal? That’s practically a miracle.

Yet here we are. The Bay Area wrecking crew known as Exodus, one of the original architects of thrash metal’s glory days, are gearing up to unleash their latest slab of carnage, Goliath. It lands March 20 through Napalm Records, and if drummer Tom Hunting is any indication, the band didn’t exactly stroll into this record like a bunch of comfortable veterans.

Nope. They attacked it like a bunch of kids who just discovered distortion pedals.

“It was a bombastic free flow of just, you know... Some of the tracking was just like farm to table, I call it,” Hunting says. “Like Gary (Holt) writes it, we're all living in that house, I work it out on an electronic kit, bam, the next day I'm tracking it, you know, nervously.”

You can almost picture it: a house somewhere in the Bay Area full of guitars, half-empty coffee cups, drum pads clattering away, and riffs bouncing off the walls like pinballs.

But before we get too far into the sausage-making, it’s worth noting that Goliath also represents a fresh chapter for Exodus behind the scenes.

A New Flag to Fly

For years the band called Nuclear Blast home. If you were buying thrash records anytime in the last couple of decades, odds are that familiar green tinted logo was somewhere on the back. But like all things in the music industry, time moves on.

“You kind of nailed it there,” Hunting says of the label change. “It was a pretty organic transition and like, you know, we loved being on Nuclear Blast and like they were super allies of us for so long. I mean they signed us (in 2004) and we had no business being on a label. We were just drugged out messes and they liked the music and they signed us.”

It’s a wonderfully honest bit of self-assessment. Thrash bands in the ’80s were not exactly known for their tidy lifestyles.

Still, decades later the people who originally helped bring Exodus into the fold had largely moved on.

“I think prior to making the switch like nobody we knew (that worked at Nuclear Blast) from that era (when Exodus was first signed to Nuclear Blast) was still at the label,” Hunting explains. “So we felt like kind of like a pretty organic fit to move, you know. And one of those close people now works with Napalm so it just seemed like a pretty organic fit.”

So Exodus packed up their riffs and set up shop with Napalm, a label that over the years has grown from a niche European operation into one of metal’s heavier hitters.

And so far?

“So far it's been awesome.”

Hard to argue with that.

Writing the Beast

If the last Exodus record, Persona Non Grata, was born out of pandemic lockdown boredom, Goliath came together a little differently.

During COVID, Hunting and guitarist Gary Holt started jamming at Hunting’s home near Lake Almanor simply because there wasn’t much else to do.

“That was my place where we did that and it was during COVID and it was it's kind of the only thing we could control at the time,” Hunting says. “Everything was all locked down and it was me and Gary (Holt). It (was a) jam session turned into a writing session turned into a recording session and there you have Persona Non Grata.”

This time around, the band tried something a little more communal.

“I kind of went to where Gary lives in that area and we came up with a nucleus of like you know it's probably a seven songs or whatever,” Hunting says. and then we got into the studio. We rented a house in the Bay Area in the East Bay. We kind of all lived together communally”

It’s the sort of thing rock bands used to do all the time back in the glory days—pile into some secluded place and see what kind of racket comes out.

“Because you know we like that formula,” Hunting continues. “Kind of like how the forefathers did. You know like bands would go somewhere and live there for a while.”

Once the band got comfortable with that setup, the riffs started pouring in like rain off a tin roof.

“After we had, like, the nucleus of seven songs, those guys (the other guys in the band) just started writing crazy riffs, and, like, it was flowing fast. It was like, it was a creative burst, like, I've never seen before," Hunting explains, Like, Lee, he wrote a lot of songs on this record, and a lot storeed for the next record that he's already written.”

That Lee would be guitarist Lee Altus, who apparently showed up with a whole truckload of ideas.

Meanwhile Hunting was doing his best just to keep pace.

“ I'm (usually) the first one to track in the studio. So, I was working hella hard just to keep up with their, you know, inspiration. But it was awesome. It was a fun thing to be a part of.”

Capturing the Moment

One subtle factor driving the creative intensity behind Goliath is the band’s awareness of the persistence of time.

After more than forty years in the genre they helped shape, the members of Exodus know that every album matters.

“We’re all in our 60s now,” Hunting says matter-of-factly. “So we kind of had this mindset like, let’s just record everything we can while the ideas are flowing.”

That urgency didn’t translate into pressure so much as momentum.

“We just kept the flow going,” he says. “Nothing bad can happen from writing more music.”

A Different Set of Ears

Behind the mixing board, Goliath also marks a change.

For years Exodus worked with producer Andy Sneap, who has become something of a metal production legend, not to mention a touring guitarist for Judas Priest. But Sneap’s schedule these days is, well… packed.

“I mean he really is pretty busy with Priest,” Hunting says. “He actually suggested that we you know use somebody else on this one.”

Enter producer Mark Lewis, known for his work with bands like Whitechapel and Nile.

“I mean Mark did a fantastic job on the record,” Hunting says. “He crushed it.”

More importantly, he was easy to work with.

“He was really easy to talk to you about certain things we're looking at like you know we want to put it in here you know this jumping there or whatever pull it from another take.”

In other words: exactly the kind of collaborative vibe the band wanted.

The Return of Rob Dukes

One of the album’s most anticipated elements, as well, is the return of vocalist Rob Dukes, whose ferocious voice helped define several Exodus records in the 2000s.

According to Hunting, Dukes delivered a performance that pushed the band’s sound into new territory.

“Yeah I mean he did such a good job on this record. We we took the music to places like it's never been before for us and it was a good time. We had fun and he had some great ideas, you know”

Dukes’ aggressive vocal approach adds a particularly sharp edge to the material.

“There’s something wrong with that guy,” Hunting jokes. “He’s overly brutal.”

The Long Road to “Goliath”

Then there’s the title track itself, "Goliath" - a song with a backstory that stretches decades.

“You know it's just that riff on 'Goliath' has been trying to get into an Exodus song like I think since 2000 or something,” Hunting says.

The riff came from guitarist Gary Holt during what Hunting politely calls the band’s “dark days.”

“In the years the dark days when we were all drugged out Gary wrote that riff we used to call it Creepy,” he explains. “And there was a few different incarnations of it and just like any other method to tweak the project like it just never made it into a song.”

But Holt held onto it.

“He held on to the riff forever and ever and now that we're all like past that thankfully luckily he installed it in the song.”

The result leans into a slow, ominous groove that tips its hat toward the masters of doom themselves, the mighty Black Sabbath.

And just to make things a little weirder, in the best possible way, the track also features violin courtesy of Katie Jacoby.

“We've known Katie for a long time,” Hunting says. “She used to join us on stage back in the day and she would play "A Lesson in Violence". She played the main riff the rhythm parts and some lead on her violin.”

The guitar players, apparently, were impressed.

“Both guitar players would just be staring at her like oh shit I gotta follow that.”

Forty Years Later

After four decades of thrash metal mayhem, Exodus could easily settle into legacy-act mode. Plenty of bands from their era have done exactly that.

But Hunting doesn’t sound particularly interested in nostalgia.

“We feel like you know what we do is kind of a gift,” he says. “We're lucky people who've traveled the world and you know had amazing times and experiences and fucking rocked all over the place.”

And if Goliath proves anything, it’s that Exodus still has plenty left in the tank.

Because at the end of the day, Hunting says all the legacy talk doesn’t really matter anyway.

“I think it's just remember us as you know not just thrash but you know two elements of musicality and, I don't know respect, it I guess,” he says.

Then he laughs and shrugs it all off.

“But you know, that all, said fuck all that. Just remember us as crushing.”